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Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Gold prices continue to climb and John Licata, chief commodity strategist at Blue Phoenix Inc., says he sees reason to be optimistic about gold's future. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, John says that as inflationary pressures present themselves, gold prices will continue their upward move. He also sees silver, platinum and palladium as interesting plays for investors.

At times such as this I am reminded of some words from Cardinal Newman: "We now have passed the Gate, and are within the House of Judgment." Yet one cannot make a sensible judgment without good information: and election campaigns are about assertion and not fact. Much of what you encounter in the next 30 days will be propaganda, and should be treated accordingly. Your intelligence will be insulted in a most insolent fashion. The truth will be kept from you on every possible occasion. Artifice will entirely overpower substance. No wonder so many of us long for May 7.

Covering Up Civilian DeathsThe recent news brought reports of two incidents in two countries where US troops killed civilians and then lied to cover up the evidence. These are but the latest of a steady stream of lies from military and Pentagon sources about the killing of civilians.

After initially claiming that two pregnant women and a teenage girl killed in a US Special Forces raid on an Afghan home in Khataba in February had been discovered bound and slain by the Americans, the US military has admitted that they were actually shot and killed by those US troops--who then tried to cover up their “mistake” by carving the bullets out of the bodies with knives, removing other incriminating bullets from the compound’s walls, and then washing away the bloody evidence with alcohol.

Targeting Journalists in Iraq is Pentagon PolicyThe Baghdad snuff video released by WikiLeaks has yet to receive much corporate media play. MSNBC, however, covered the video. In a discussion of the video, Brett McGurk of the Council on Foreign Relations and an NSC member for Bush and Obama, defended the mass murder episode. McGurk said the soldiers fired on journalists because they thought they saw an RPG launcher.

Is the U.S. on its way toward a Debt Disaster?More than likely, and this will set the stage for the total demise of the dollar, which will usher in a world currency to replace the long-standing reserve currency status the U.S. has held. No matter how the Fed and Wall Street manipulate the markets with 'slight of hand' collaboration, backed by the approval of our current administration in order to mesmorize the American people into believing the economy is recovering - our AAA status will be downgraded, and along with it our way of life as a once prosperous nation!

Industries brace for peak water as peak oil hitsAs though businesses didn't have enough on their plates dealing with peak oil in their strategic planning, production practices, and business models, now researchers from GlobeScan, after conducting a survey of 1,200 sustainability experts, have concluded that peak water is upon us and will worsen over the coming decade making every production process employed in creating the amenties of modern life more expensive

Britain is hoping to put itself at the forefront of the fight against internet piracy. The Digital Economy Bill, which will be debated in parliament later on Tuesday, will give authorities the power to block pirate websites and cut people off from the Internet for file sharing. But protesters claim the measures are too extreme and threaten the very future of the web

British Labour MP Austin Mitchell in Westminster speaks out on the Digital Economy Bill, which could give authorities the power to block pirate websites and cut people off from the Internet for file sharing.

Collateral Pentagon"We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

That was General Stanley McChrystal, supreme commander of United States forces in Afghanistan, late last month - during one of the virtual "town hall" meetings held with US troops every two weeks, as reported in the New York Times.

McChrystal added, "To my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it."

Obama & Co. Want National Biometric IDA bipartisan group of U.S. Senators is teaming up with the Obama administration to legalize illegal immigrants and require biometric national ID cards for every American worker, prompting a swift and bipartisan backlash across the nation.

The proposal would unconstitutionally force nearly all Americans to obtain the new “tamper proof” Social Security cards while purporting to require that all employers purchase new $800 ID scanners. It would also provide a “path to citizenship” for the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants currently living in America.

Come To Jesus Part DeuxThe reason we have not seen an all-on collapse - yet - is that the government has stepped in and has borrowed and spent a literal $3 trillion over the last two years for the purpose of hiding the insolvency of virtually every bank and a good number of citizens in this nation, along with virtually every pension plan, annuity and other "defined benefit" plan and institution. They also changed the rules of the game regarding asset valuations - that is, they cheated.

This gambit has produced a veneer of recovery.

What does it mean to be Middle Class in 2010? – No College Degree, Massive Amounts of Debt, One Health Crisis from Bankruptcy, and Beholden to the Banking Elite.Being middle class today does not carry the financial security that it once carried in the 1950s and 1960s. Interestingly enough, many Americans at that time did not own stocks yet somehow they managed well because they had access to affordable housing without toxic mortgages and many had the ability to work with one company and have some kind of security from their company. It was a mutual relationship as even Henry Ford shook the auto manufacturing world by upping wages for his workers. Yet today, we are being fed distorted information from Wall Street that we need to have this system where workers are disposable entities only to increase the profits of the corporate class. If people are hurting so much why are we paying billions in bonuses to a small group of people that really haven’t helped the country? In fact, many of these are directly responsible for our current economic problems. At the root, this has been the cancer that has eaten away at what it means to be middle class. Social government welfare for Wall Street and Darwinian capitalism for the rest of us.

"The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the registry, to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that; (A) is or has been used in or on a patient; (B) is a class III device; or a class II device that is implantable."

In real world speak, according to this report, this new law, when fully implemented, provides the framework for making the United States the first Nation in the World to require each and every one of its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn't, allowed medical care in their country.

Tensions Mount Between Washington and its Puppet in KabulThursday’s warning by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that US and other NATO troops could be regarded as “invaders” in his country provided a rare glimpse into the political realities in Afghanistan—and called forth a furious reaction from the Obama administration and the American media.

Karzai denounced those in the Washington and the Western media who have criticized the corruption and incompetence of his regime, complaining, “They wanted to have a puppet government. They wanted a servant government.”

General Election 2010: Gordon Brown's loose relationship with the truth In his Downing Street statement this morning Gordon Brown said that one of the values he had learned during his upbringing in his “ordinary middle class home” was “telling the truth”. He did not learn it terribly well. His period as Chancellor was notorious for his manipulation of statistics – double counting and treble counting became routine. Since becoming Prime Minister, he has found it harder to get away with such slippery behaviour. Last month he was forced to issue a humiliating public apology for misleading the Chilcot Inquiry with his false claim (and he must have known it was false) that he had increased spending on the armed forces every year he was in the Treasury. And only last week he was rebuked by Sir Michael Scholar of the UK Statistics Authority for playing fast and loose with immigration figures. The PM used two sets of “not comparable” figures to back his assertion that immigration was falling; it meant the number of new arrivals was under-counted by 30,000. There was a time when misleading Parliament in this way was regarded as a heinous offence. No more. In his book Servants of the People, Andrew Rawnsley recounts an explosion from the then Chancellor after he had been challenged during a radio interview about what he knew of Bernie Ecclestone’s £1 million donation to the Labour Party. He knew a lot, but said he didn’t. According to Rawnsley, a highly agitated Brown afterwards yelled at aides: “I lied. If this gets out, I’ll be destroyed.” If lying upsets him so much, why does he persist in doing it?

Statistics from recruiter Reed.co.uk's job index showed a drop from 105 to 102 in March amid "mixed signals".

They want the Government to curb our shambolic open-door policy, according to Migrationwatch.

£1,400 a year added to mortgagesThe average annual UK mortgage bill could go up by £700 - £1,400 if the Government does not reduce the amount it plans to borrow, think tank Policy Exchange has warned in its latest report ‘The Cost of Inaction'...

The UK currently has a budget deficit of nearly 12% of GDP. When deficits are very high, that adds a risk premium to interest rates, because of fears about inflation or default.

Analysts warned that the pound could come under further pressure over the next month unless polls started to show a clear winner.

Labour’s Climate Change Act: A Conspiracy to DefraudThe revelation that the Government’s Climate Change Act will cost the taxpayer up to £18.3 billion per year between now and 2050, together with its sanitising “enquiry” into the Climate Studies Unit (CSU) scandal, proves that it is working hand-in-glove with the United Nations (UN) towards their “global governance” objectives.

Westminster bargaining to pass DNA Bill beginsProposals to store the DNA profiles of innocent people for six years will be the focus of bargaining at Westminster as ministers try to pass key legislation before Parliament is dissolved.

Obama excludes Iran in ban on US nuke strikesUS President Barack Obama plans to release a review of the US nuclear arms strategy that purportedly restricts the use of its nuclear arms against most non-atomic states except Iran and North Korea.

Is Gordon Brown Proposing To Print Climate Money?Monday, 05 April 2010 10:07 Ethiopian Journal — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says the high level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing has identified various financial sources to help developing countries combat climate change and set directives for further activities.

Meles and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown co-chaired the first meeting of the group held in London last week.

Meles told the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency that the meeting assessed ways of getting financial sources through air and marine transport and the right of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to print money and implementation of new taxes, among others.

More “hiding the decline”Re-reading Climategate and AR4 Review Comments, I noticed an interesting discussion about handling the Law Dome O18 record – a series used in Mann and Jones (2003) and Jones and Mann (2004) with a very elevated MWP

The huge number of overseas nurses, cleaners and porters has forced health chiefs to send them on ten-week English courses because many do not understand basic medical phrases.

Among the terms some workers from countries such as Burma, the Philippines and Poland can't follow are 'nil by mouth', 'doing the rounds' and 'bleeping a doctor'

Wounded paratrooper told he may lose £25k compensation after he was pictured holding Carling Cup at WembleyParalysed in an attack in Afghanistan, Private Dave Tatlock was told he would never walk again.But the 20-year-old drew on all his battlefield courage to prove the doctors wrong, making slow but steady progress over two difficult years with the aid of a stick.In a salute to his bravery, he was invited to be a guest of honour when his beloved Manchester United played Aston Villa in the Carling Cup final at Wembley in February. He even carried the trophy on to the pitch.

In 1995, he founded a small DIY supply small business—Longwall Holdings Limited—of which he is non-executive chairman, having served as the chief executive until 2000.[1] In 1998, he was elected to Westminster City Council for the West End ward comprising Mayfair and Soho. He was chairman of the Housing Committee from 1999 to 2001, before stepping down in 2002. During much of this time, Boles flatshared with fellow Conservative activists, Michael Gove and Ivan Massow. He and Gove, along with fellow Westminster Conservatives Ed Vaizey, David Cameron, George Osborne and Rachel Whetstone, are sometimes referred to as the 'Notting Hill Set' an influential group of relatively young Conservatives.[2] He founded the think tank Policy Exchange in 2002 and served as the Director until leaving the organisation in 2007 to avoid a potential conflict of interest. During his tenure Policy Exchange became one of the most influential think tanks in the country, especially after David Cameron was elected Conservative Party leader in 2005.[3]

This time Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at the scandals of Tony "No Blood for Oil" Blair lying about selling the UK gold supply on "technical advice of the Bank of England;" a millionaire tramp in Sweden and a casino that refuses to pay in America; and, finally, the Irish 'Bad Bank' and the 'Celtic Chernobyl.'

Mass Depopulation, Genocide, WW3? Part 1- The link to the New World OrderUK, April 2, 2010 Palestine Telegraph - This heading may appear alarming to some people but is there a hidden master plan? Is it possible that some aspects of this has already started and if so how and who is involved. We hear so many times of the so called “New World Order and the “Illuminati” but does it actually exist? What ever you want to call this elite organisation one can say with some certainty that it does certainly exist. I also find it incredible that this relatively small group can change the course of history and we the millions may have no power to stop it.

The IMF is expected to recommend the tax as a means of raising significant sums of money from the banking sector without dramatically affecting the work of the financial system.

It will sit alongside a global levy on bank balance sheets as the grip tightens on the sector following the mammoth bail-outs seen during the meltdown

Good riddance to this rotten ParliamentThere will be no weeping, wailing or gnashing of teeth when this Parliament finally croaks its last. Nor will there be any mourners around its death-bed.Rarely - if ever before - in this nation's history has a Parliament earned so much contempt and scorn from the people it is supposed to represent.I have been reporting at Westminster for just a few months short of half a century and never, during that time, has there been such a backlash of fury from the British voting public.

HAWKINS: Global warming is backAfter two years of rau-cous meetings at great ho-tels and re-sorts around the world, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) failed to deliver a treaty in Copenhagen in December. The clash of national interests over who would be required to cripple their economies to "save the planet" from the chimera of global warming proved insurmountable. The flawed process should have ended, but UNFCCC is pressing on. Talks will open again in Bonn on Friday, to be followed by several more negotiating junkets before a grand sequel to Copenhagen is held next December in Cancun, Mexico.

Last Stand Against UK Digital Economy Bill and Dangerous Internet RestrictionsToday, adverts in the Guardian and Times will call on Government MPs to make sure the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) receives full debate, rather than being rushed through ‘wash-up’. DEB, which is designed to tackle online copyright infringement, could spell the end of public / open Wi-Fi Hotspots, force legitimate websites to close (potentially this might even affect Google and YouTube) and could result in innocent broadband ISP users being disconnected from the internet.

In a report prepared for the first-ever meeting of the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), researchers paint a bleak picture of the future. They say that, unless immediate action is taken on increasing the world's food supply, we could soon be faced with a crisis unlike any other we ever witnessed. The largest amount of work needs to be placed in poorer nations, which have been kept subservient for centuries, but which now need to become able to feed themselves. Most of these areas do not contribute to the global food supply in a noteworthy proportion.

UK house prices face prolonged bear marketThe housing market may now be trapped in a long-term bear market and may not bounce back to the peaks it reached in 2007 for generations, a leading economic consultancy has warned.

Virtually all of the new charges, such as the 50p rate of income tax and the freezing of tax thresholds, have been planned for some time — but this will not do much to ease the pain as taxpayers see nearly £20 billion disappear from their pockets over the next couple of years.

Member of Hollie’s Army targets Malcolm Chisholm SMP Thanks to the very fine efforts of Mark Welsh (an active member), Hollie’s supporters have now been able (via Mark) to not only air their concerns and views but also had the opportunity to hand over a brief to Malcolm Chisholm SMP the member for Edinburgh North and Leith.

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